Referee Bennett Salvatore talks with Detroit Pistons guard Brandon Knight (7) during a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on April 10, 2013. / Associated Press

By Dan Feldman

Detroit Free Press Special Writer

Dan Feldman writes for the Detroit Pistons blog PistonPowered. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Detroit Free Press nor its writers. PistonPowered writers will contribute a column every Friday at freep.com/pistons. Contact Dan anytime at pistonpowered@gmail.com or on Twitter @pistonpowered.

Brandon Knight was overrated at Kentucky, overrated by the Pistons and then, surprisingly, just plain over in Detroit.

There hasn’t been a more polarizing Pistons player since Grant Hill, and Knight’s rapid ascent only fueled the debate.

At Kentucky, Knight turned the ball over too much, generated too few steals and shot too inefficiently. Yet he played a lot (which boosted his counting numbers into record-breaking territory), hit some big shots during Kentucky’s Final Four run and continued a lineage of John Calipari’s one-and-done point guards — John Wall (No. 1 pick), Tyreke Evans (rookie of the year) and Derrick Rose (No. 1 pick and rookie of the year) — that had been very impressive.

Many expected Knight would be picked No. 3 in the 2011 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz, or maybe No. 5 by the Toronto Raptors. But he, deservedly, fell to the No. 8, where the Pistons made what I thought was the correct choice. As underwhelmed as I was by Knight, the big men I coveted more already were off the board, and I was, basically, at a draw between Knight and Kawhi Leonard (oops). Writing about Knight at the time, I discussed his flaws and then continued:

“There are plenty of reasons to like Knight. He’s talented, smart, hardworking, athletic and long — a special combination. How many players possess all five of those attributes and fail?”

Of course, the Pistons jumped on the positives, immediately comparing Knight to Chauncey Billups and making Knight their starting point guard just seven games into his NBA career.

A lot went wrong during the two years Knight started for Detroit, and a large majority of it was not his fault, but his presence was particularly felt in one area:

Knight ruined the Pistons’ offense.

He didn’t do it singlehandedly, and the powers that put him in position to fail deserve more blame, but as far as players go, he’s the main culprit.

It largely went unnoticed, because the Pistons have been mostly terrible on both sides of the ball for so long — they’re the only team besides the Charlotte Bobcats with bottom-10 offenses and defenses each of the last two years — but Detroit actually had a better-than-NBA-average offense during their 30-52 2010-11 season. That offense wasn’t pretty, relying heavily on isolation play, but it was much more effective — ranking 15th in offensive rating — than the last two years, when the Pistons ranked 26th and 21st.

So what went wrong?

Dean Oliver developed what he calls “Four Factors of Basketball Success”: shooting, turnovers, rebounding and free throws. In the two seasons since 2010-11, the Pistons have rebounded better and converted more free throws, so those aren’t the issues. Their shooting got substantially worse in 2011-12, bouncing back a bit last season, and Knight played a small part in that problem.

But their turnovers got horrifically worse.

Detroit’s turnover rate in 2010-11 ranked fourth in the NBA. In the next two years, it plummeted to 28th and 27th.

On the court, that was Knight’s fault more than anyone else’s. He turns the ball over a lot, which isn’t terrible if a player is gambling to get high-percentage shots at the rim or set up his teammates, but Knight did neither particularly well.

For someone so smart — Knight was Ivy League material in the classroom — how could he play so foolishly on the court?

As Damon Bryant of Adaptive Assessment Services explains well, there’s a difference between Verbal/Linguistic processing in the brain and Visual/Spatial processing in the brain. Knight clearly excels at Verbal/Linguistic, the type of reading-and-writing skills that help someone excel in school. But Visual/Spatial — like seeing plays develop on a basketball court — is a different skill set, one in which Knight is lacking.

In other words, one of the key reasons the Pistons valued Knight — his intelligence — was too broad of a measure to mean he’ll become a good point guard. There are different types of intelligence, and the area in which Knight had proved to excel doesn’t necessarily translate to the type of intelligence high-end point guards possess.

At some point, the Pistons figured out Knight was flawed, and his star began to fade in Detroit.

During Knight’s rookie year, former point guard Rodney Stuckey started beside him and assumed point guard duties when they overwhelmed Knight. The next season, the Pistons removed Knight’s training wheels, but when he faltered with more responsibility on his plate, they traded for Jose Calderon and moved Knight to shooting guard. Now they moved him straight out of town.

DeAndre Jordan dunk’s, Kyrie Irving’s crossover and a preposterous missed lay-up have, at different points, turned Knight into a national laughingstock, but those are just isolated instances of poor fortune more than anything else. Really, they distracted from how bad Knight’s foundation was.

Of course, there’s a giant mitigating factor to this discussion of Knight: his age.

Knight had just turned 20 when the Pistons made him their starting point guard. Asking a player so young to take such a large role was asking for trouble, but because of poor roster building, the Pistons had little choice. Many other NBA starting point guards, most of them older than Knight when they first got the job, would have been among the league’s worst if they had to assume the role at 20.

With a development plan tailored to helping him see the court better, especially given his legendary practice habits, Knight still could become a good NBA point guard.

But the Pistons don’t have time. Tom Gores wants to make the playoffs this season.

Attempting to do so with Knight would have made the challenge needlessly difficult.